UNDER-FIVES and pregnant women in the UK are emerging as key swine flu risk groups, according to hospital figures and the age profiles of those who have already died.
As many as 100,000 people may now have contracted swine flu in the UK, if estimates released by the health protection agency are correct.
The country’s health protection agency altered its advice this week to include the youngest age range – the under-fives – in the category of those “predominantly affected”, while the Royal College of Midwives issued fresh advice yesterday on giving expectant women anti-viral drugs, suggesting they be given a course of Relenza, using an inhaler.
The shift in emphasis by health officials is a reminder that even if the final death rates from the pandemic are the same as normal seasonal flu, the social impact will be significantly different, with the disease apparently targeting the young more than elderly people. In normal seasonal flu, it is the elderly who usually succumb through developing pneumonia.
Prof Hugh Pennington, one of the country’s leading microbiologists, yesterday questioned the department of health’s projection that as many as 65,000 people could die in the UK from swine flu.
Prof Pennington, chairman of an official inquiry into the Scottish E-coli outbreak of 1996, said: “There are all sorts of imponderables which mean these figures are meaningless.”
He said the attack rate of 30 per cent projected by the department was unlikely and he would be “very surprised” if the number of deaths came anywhere close to 65,000.
“It would be a fantastically effective virus if it was doing that,” he said. “I’m surprised at the department of health putting out these figures in the confident way they have. I can understand them saying to emergency planners you have to be prepared, but why are they going public in what seems like panic mode?”
Altogether, 29 people have died from swine flu in the UK. A woman who gave birth prematurely and a baby were among the latest victims after the number of deaths in the UK from the infection rose sharply.
The department of health yesterday dismissed fears that the threat of high death rates could endanger the international supply of vaccines.
The UK has ordered 132 million doses of vaccine, sufficient for the whole of the UK population. The first doses could be ready as early as August. – ( Guardianservice)